IGN Employees Lose Jobs After 40% Increase in Audience Last year

| Mar 18, 2010 | 0 comments

Rupert Murdock’s News Corp. which owns IGN and a slew of additional sites (see bottom of post), seems to be dropping the layoff bombs like the best of them.  20% or about 65 folks lost their jobs recently. The associated leaked memo was released regarding the layoffs.  Original article via Joystiq. Image courtesy BeforeSunrise.

Full memo from IGN President Roy Bahat:

“Today’s a hard day at IGN. We’ve had to reduce the size of our organization and are eliminating roles today in every part of the company. We are making every effort to be compassionate and fair to the people whose roles we’ve eliminated.

“We’re doing this to reduce costs. While we’ve been doing well — we’re profitable and our audience continues to grow — we’re still feeling the effects of the economy, and we need to make sure we can invest where there is opportunity. Over the past couple of years, we have been focusing IGN on areas where we can not only grow, but be best in the world: serving gamers online, and serving advertisers looking to reach men. To do that successfully, we have to be as efficient as possible in our core businesses. The difficult actions we’re taking today get us to where we need to be.

“We are losing colleagues who played an important role getting us to where we are — #1 in games and men’s lifestyle, and growing 40% over last year in the total size of our audience. We are deeply grateful to our colleagues for everything they’ve done. We as a company are absolutely headed in the right direction, and while today will be hard, it won’t stop us.

“We’ll have an All-Hands meeting later today to discuss this, and give you a chance to ask questions. Greg will be sending out a note with the exact timing, please be on the lookout for that.

“It probably goes without saying, but please keep this absolutely confidential to IGN. If you are approached by any member of the press, please direct them to Kris Sharbaugh.

“Thank you,
“Roy”

I’m sorry Roy, inquiring minds want to know.
Wikipedia listing of News Corp owned internet sites:

  • Fox Networks – one of the largest international ad networks.
    • Fox Interactive Media
      • Foxsports.com – website with sports news, scores, statistics, video and fantasy sports
      • MySpace – Social networking website, general interest website acquired through purchase from Intermix Media
      • MySpace TV, a video site which will host amateur videos, contents from net and studios that competes with Google’s YouTube
      • Photobucket – Photo sharing website.
      • Beliefnet – Largest online faith and spirituality network.
      • Hulu (27%) – online video streaming site in partnership with NBC Universal and The Walt Disney Company.
      • Flektor – provides Web-based tools for photo and video editing and mashups.
      • IGN Entertainment – Internet entertainment portal (Includes the sites IGN, GameSpy, Rotten Tomatoes, TeamXbox, and Askmen.com)
      • Giga.de
      • Slingshot Labs – web development incubator (Includes the sites DailyFill).
      • Strategic Data Corp – interactive advertising company which develops technology to deliver targeted internet advertising.
      • Scout.com
      • WhatIfSports.com – sports simulation and prediction website. Also provides fantasy-style sports games to play.
    • Indya.com – ‘India’s no. 1 Entertainment Portal’
    • ROO Group Inc (5% increasing to 10% with performance targets)
    • News Digital Media
    • REA Group (60.7%)
      • Realestate.com.au
      • Casa.it(69.4%), Sky Italia also holds a 30.6% share
      • atHome group, operator of leading realestate websites in Luxembourg, France, Belgium and Germany.
        • Altowin (51%),provider of office management tools for realestate agents in Belgium.
      • Propertyfinder.com (50%), News International holds the remaining 50%
        • Sherlock Publications, owner of hotproperty.co.uk portal and magazine titles ‘Hot Property’, ‘Renting’ and ‘Overseas’
        • ukpropertyshop.co.uk, most comprehensive UK estate agent directory.
      • PropertyLook, property websites in Australia and New Zealand.
      • HomeSite.com.au, home renovation and improvement website.
      • Square Foot Limited, Hong Kong’s largest English Language property magazine and website
        • Primedia- Holding co. of Inside DB, a Hong Kong lifestyle magazine.
    • TadpoleNet Media (10%) Hosts of ArmySailor.com
    • New Zealand

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    DJ Brady

    About the Author

    DJ Brady has been in the industry for over 15 years. Due to being rather OCD about research into every nook and cranny of the latest tech, DJ is full of bizarre knowledge that may or may not be relevant to, well, anything. He has attended CES, E3 and GDC (upcoming) trade shows for years. Once upon a time he managed a local overseas importing video game shop, eventually a Gamestop, and at another time wrote for an insider trade magazine called "The VideoGame Advisor". You can contact him at Djbrady@mobilelocalsocial.com and on Twitter @ZenInsight (he comments here under this name too)